· Things Michael Bay considers awesome: Blowing shit up, tigers in his living room, fiber-optic internet access. Especially the first one.
· We completely forgot to watch The Moment of Truth last night, but thanks to Fox's handy YouTube recaps, we got all caught up in just two minutes. We'll never suffer through another drawn out pause between the lie-detecting robot lady's "The answer is..." and an anticlimactic "TRUE!" again!
· Here's a handy guide to how some celebrities are spending their Valentine's Day. It's interesting because they're famous!
· Incarcerated former Prison Break star Lane Garrison and Access Hollywood are pen pals! Tomorrow: Dr. Drew reads aloud from Pat O'Brien's sobriety diary on Celebrity Rehab.

Continuing his obsessive quest to take the finest slasher films the 1970s and 80s had to offer and update them for an ADD-addled teen audience eager to see the stars of their favorite The CW melodramas eviscerated in a budget-conscious fashion on their local multiplex's big screen, leading Hollywood re-envisionary Michael Bay has convinced New Line to allow him to run the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise through his Platinum Dunes dream-despoiling factory.

• New Commonwealth Bank ad [YouTube]

It's not for nothing that Transformers should boast grosses on the high-end of 12-figures, as trumpeted by a seemingly endless succession of brushed-titanium zeroes on the pages of today's Variety: The studio has master blowingshitupologist's Michael Bay's passion and perfectionism to thank for that.

Even though the just-released Transformers DVD has broken this year's first-week sales record, director Michael Bay, ever the blowing-shit-up perfectionist, isn't completely satisfied with the product: "I was traveling promoting (Transformers) while they were doing the DVD. You try to guide people as to what to do (in making it), but ultimately if you rush your date, you are not going to get the DVD as good as it could be. ... Studios want to pump this stuff out, and my job is to care about it and try to put the right people on it. They just see it as a show they are selling, and I see it as a movie." Included in the features that will have to wait for the Transformers: Special Fauxteur's Cut DVD: a behind-the-scenes clip in which an uncompromising Bay reduces star Shia LaBeouf to a weeping mess by repeatedly screaming a suggested line-reading through a megaphone, footage in which the phrase "you talentless little baby" figures prominently. [USA Today]

Yesterday, the leadership of the Writers Guild sent out an e-mail blast asking its scribe army for strike authorization, hoping that letting the entire industry know that they've requested the ballistic launch codes from their membership will force the studios to take their just-revived contract negotiations seriously:

With Transformers having shattered all kinds of non-sequel box office records, Voltron in the development pipeline, and Gobots: The Movie awaiting the hedge fund capital infusion that will allow it to expand into a feature-length production, it's obvious that Hollywood is suffering from a serious case of robofever—and, as the THR notes today, the disease is worsening: Warner Bros. and Spider-Man star/occasionally portly poker enthusiast/burgeoning producer Tobey Maguire are getting into the Giant Fucking Robots business, announcing that they're teaming up to bring Robotech, yet another 1980s cartoon series involving oversized automatons and the human freedom fighters who love them, to your local multiplex:

Extending an olive branch in the midst of the high-definition movie-format wars, Sony has cordially invited HD-DVD rivals Microsoft and Toshiba to join the Blu-ray Disc Association. It is pretending HD-DVD backers didn't just shell out a ton of cash to get Paramount (and Michael Bay) on board.

In an effort to prove he's as fickle as he is talented, Transformers director Michael Bay has retracted what he calls a Kool-Aid-fueled denouncement of Paramount's deal to support, exclusively, the HD-DVD format for high-definition movie discs. When Bay first heard the news, he posted, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For [Paramount] to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!" In what could only have been a fit of rage, he then decreed there would be no Transformers 2. Why the change in tune?

· Michael Bay now officially prefers Paramount's HD-DVD Kool-Aid (how exactly one drinks it "hook line and sinker" is still a mystery) to that served by Blu-Ray enthusiasts: "Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three Blu-Ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-Ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted - nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you - I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard." [via Variety]
· This is probably the most fun game in the arcade, right up that surprisingly strong French maid snaps your arm like a twig.
· Of course, no list of misleading URLs would be complete without the grandest of them all, Hollywood's own WhorePresents.com.
· Colombian Actress Swaps Heroin For Nudity.

Yesterday, Michael Bay made his much-anticipated cameo in the Phil Spector trial, taking the stand to dispute the defense team's theory that the director's alleged snubbing of Lana Clarkson at a Hollywood party drove the despondent actress to shoot herself in the home of a happy-go-lucky guy who loved to joke about how women "all deserve a bullet in their head." Court TV reports that while Bay was initially a little uncomfortable, it didn't take long for the director to break out some of the trademark, rapid-fire banter he always uses to lighten up any explosive spectacle he's involved with:

Today brings potentially bad news for Transformers director Michael Bay, who last week was so memorably dragged into the legal clusterfuck that is the Phil Spector trial by a star witness named after a popular seasonal dessert. Apparently, Bay's previous telephone testimony won't be enough, and he'll soon be forced to take the witness stand to explain how he never blew off Lana Clarkson at a party, sending her into a depressive spiral that caused her to take her own life. Reports Court TV's Spector trial blog:

• Michael Bay: Power Director [YouTube]

Disturbed by recent Phil Spector trial testimony by "star" defense witness Punkin Pie Laughlin that his alleged snubbing of Lana Clarkson at a party had somehow driven the actress to suicide, Transformers director Michael Bay took time out from the Tokyo leg of his Giant Fucking Robots Are Coming world tour yesterday to clarify the spurious claims about his fauxteurial power over life and death. Reports the LAT:

Giant Fucking Pets Are Coming [MichaelBay.com]

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and tell everyone about the time you noticed Faye Dunaway meditating between screenings at the Sunset 5.

A tipster alerts us to some potentially exciting news on this Friday morning: Taking advantage of a day off for the Paramount and DreamWorks personnel who might prevent such a breach from occurring, someone has leaked details of the plot for Transformers 2, the planned 2009 follow-up that will finally free the blockbuster franchise from its nonsequel ghetto, to IMDb. We highly recommend that anyone hoping to be surprised two summers hence not read the spoilers contained above, which will likely be removed from IMdb site by the time you read these words.

Michael Bay's My Little Pony may only be a cheeky fan homage, but once the six-day, 11-figure Transformers totals are tallied up, we wouldn't be surprised to see this story—about an alien race of equine dwarves with brushable manes and names like Licketysplit and Baby Rainribbon arriving via rainbow-wormhole to blow a bunch of shit up—fast-tracked into production.

Never one to shy away from using his minimalist web presence as a virtual megaphone through which he can shout at either the international movie stars or internet dickwads who displease him, Michael Bay blogged up some choice words for Transformers producers Tom DeSanto and Don Murphy late last Friday. However, once cooler, gloriously coiffed fauxteur heads prevailed, Bay removed the post, thinking better of airing his grievances in public. But through the magic of the internets, Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke has recovered the text of the director's complaints about how he felt the producers were unfairly claiming credit for the movie's blowing-shit-up vision. An excerpt: